The path to Major League Baseball is like no other in sports. Players get drafted in one of the 20 rounds, and then they are tasked with navigating a wide-ranging system of affiliated baseball in the minor leagues.
While there are serious issues with minor league baseball in terms of player wages, the teams themselves are important to communities that otherwise would never have a professional sports franchise. And that leads to some excellent team names that uniquely represent a home city.
Out of the 120 teams across minor league baseball, we settled on our 10 favorite team names. Yes, these are real teams.
The NFL struggles with the concept every season: What is a catch? Plays that certainly look like catches are ruled incomplete. Simply put, nobody knows what a catch is. Baseball, though, shouldn’t have that problem.
But during Sunday’s minor league game between Triple-A clubs Sacramento River Cats (Giants) and Oklahoma City Dodgers, we saw a quirk of baseball’s catch rules come into play in a huge way.
With no outs in the fourth inning and nobody on, the Dodgers’ Devin Mann hit a deep fly ball to center field that appeared to be caught on the run in the warning track by Bryce Johnson. It was undeniable: Johnson had the ball in his glove.
Yet, Johnson’s momentum carried him to the wall. He leaped towards the fence to slow himself down or possibly add some showmanship to the catch. But as he did that, he lost the ball and dropped it on the other side of the wall. Umpires ruled the play as a home run.
While Johnson took several steps after catching the ball, baseball requires the fielder to either maintain possession or voluntarily release the ball. The umpires thought that Johnson did neither of those as he accidentally dropped the ball while still in the process of completing the entire sequence.
The broadcast seemed to think that the umpires missed the call, but in the scope of the rules, it was correct. Either way, it was one of the stranger home runs we’ll ever see.
The Winston-Salem Dash are the high-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. They are also have a proper minor league team name — a half-silly tribute to the local scene that looks good on a hat.
But the Dash aren’t proper in a grammatical sense. The punctuation mark that joins the two names that identify the consolidated North Carolina city of roughly 250,000 isn’t a dash. It’s a hyphen.
Of course, you don’t hyphen between the bases once the ball is hit. And the internet helped make “dash” a useful substitute for the original word that clocks in at half the syllable load. So Winston-Salem Dash works on multiple levels.
Except for one glorious day, when the grammar nerds will finally be sated.
The City of Winston-Salem and literary scholars have spoken. For one game this season the Dash will be grammatically correct and play as the Winston-Salem Hyphens on May 6 as part of Salute to Winston-Salem!
On May 6, the Winston-Salem Dash will be the Winston-Salem Hyphens. The franchise that stars like Wade Boggs, Earl Weaver, Cecil Cooper and Chris Sale once called home will, for one night, cater to every English major who looked at the Carolina League standings (or, in 2022 onward, the South Atlantic standings), squinted and softly birthed a “well, actually …” into an indifferent world.
This minor leaguer made perfectly clear his feelings about Fernando Tatis.
San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. started his rehab assignment this week as he officially begins his return from an 80-game suspension for a positive PED test.
The second game of that stint with Triple-A El Paso was Wednesday, and Tatis looked to be in top form, launching an absolute bomb off pitcher Kade McClure of the San Francisco Giants affiliate in Sacramento. But don’t think McClure considered it some sort of badge of honor.
The 27-year-old made clear his feelings about Tatis on Twitter, describing the moment as “cheater hits a homerun on rehab assignment during a steroid suspension.”
This pay raise is a long time coming for Minor League Baseball!
This has been a long time coming for minor league baseball players.
On Wednesday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that there is a tentative deal in place between MLB and the MLBPA for the first-ever collective bargaining agreement for minor league players. Currently, the deal has been ratified by player leaders, but will have to go through MLB owners and players before a deal is fully in place.
Should the deal go through, however, minor league baseball players will receive at least two times their current pay across all levels. Historically, minor leaguers have been criminally underpaid, and this historic deal would be a great first step towards giving living wages to players in AAA and below.
BREAKING: A deal is in place between the minor league players in the MLBPA and Major League Baseball on the historic first collective-bargaining agreement for minor leaguers, union officials tell ESPN. Deal is five years and includes at least 2x pay at all levels of the minors.
What a way to start off a new baseball season! While the deal isn’t without caveats — as the Domestic Reserve List would decrease from 180 to 165 per team if the deal goes through — baseball fans were happy to see minor leaguers get a well-deserved pay bump.
Catchers in baseball catch a lot of baseballs during their time behind home plate. The simple name of their position indicates just that. And while they catch a lot of baseballs, the majority of those catches are just of the routine variety.
Then we have what minor league catcher Brett Auerbach did last night against the Akron Rubberducks (what is an amazing nickname), which was nothing close to being routine. In fact, his catch on a foul ball hit behind the plate was one of the coolest catches I’ve ever seen a catcher make.
Auerbach, who plays for the Richmond Flying Squirrels (Double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants), jumped right into the netting behind home to make a wild grab.
Baseball has been being played for like 700 years (give or take) and you’d think everything that could happen in a game has already happened in a game.
Lots of us baseball watchers can probably say rather confidently that we’ve seen it all. Been there, done that. Can’t be surprised by anything that ever pops up for the rest of time.
Well, then something happens in a minor league baseball game that erases all that confidence and leaves us in awe.
Check out this fair ball that was hit by Ernie Clement of the Columbus Clippers last night in Toledo. This thing just dug itself right into the Earth in front of the plate and stayed there:
One of the rarest things you will ever see in baseball…
Chances are if you’ve ever watched a baseball game you’ve seen some fun rundowns happen, rundowns that look like those games of pickle that you used to play in your front yard.
Well, I’ve never seen a rundown end the way this one ended in a recent minor league game and I’m in absolute awe of the pitcher who made it all happen.
The pitcher’s name is Bowen Plagge and he’s on the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, who are the the Single-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. Mr. Plagge took matters into his own hands during a rundown against the Carolina Mudcats and pulled off one of the coolest double plays that you’ll ever see.
— Kannapolis Cannon Ballers (@Kcannonballers) August 9, 2022
Did you see that speed? Dude caught the ball near home and then just sprinted to second base, tagging out every guy in a red jersey that stepped in his way.
With Major League Baseball held up by a lockout, fans of America’s pastime might have to look elsewhere to get their fix for now. College baseball is the most obvious one at the moment since that season already has started. If fans have a little more patience, they will be able to keep up with the minor leagues in a month. Although there are much fewer teams than before, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of players to keep track of.
If you’re wondering if any former Notre Dame players are in the minors, you’re in luck. When the season begins, there will be quite a few players who once wore blue and gold working continuing their journey to baseball’s top level. If MLB gets its act together before it loses its whole season, you might see a few of these names with their parent club later this summer. Here’s who to look out for both this year and beyond:
It’s been an interesting weekend for home run trots across the minor leagues.
On Friday, newly promoted Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Henry Ramos got ejected when he tossed his helmet at an opponent to start a brawl during his game with the Reno Aces. He’d get called up to the big-league club two days later.
On Sunday, it was New York Yankees No. 1 prospect Anthony Volpe’s turn to get in on the home-run trot shenanigans — though I’d probably pin this incident on an oversensitive umpire.
During the fourth inning of the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades’ game against the Greensboro Grasshoppers, Volpe extended Hudson Valley’s lead with an opposite-field, 3-run home run. But keep an eye on the umpire as Volpe crossed home plate.
Anthony Volpe just hit an opposite field bomb and got ejected as he stepped on home plate. pic.twitter.com/DZcregTEhy
With zero hesitation, home plate umpire Tyler Witte ejected Volpe for something he said while rounding third. It’s unclear what Volpe said — or what he was upset about given that the calls went his way during the at-bat — but Witte had an active game tossing players. Left fielder Elijah Dunham was ejected by Witte an inning earlier after a groundout.
Despite losing the best prospect in the Yankees organization for half the game, the Renegades broke out a ridiculous 14-run ninth inning (with two grand slams!) to win, 23-4.
